Day 179: Bad Teacher (2011)

R, 1 hr. 29 min.  Directed by: Jake Kasdan.  Release Date: June 24, 2011.

I wasn't expecting a whole lot from this movie.  The trailers looked like it was going to be dull with occasional moments that were funny because they were absurd as opposed to being funny because they were inherently funny.  Unfortunately, Bad Teacher manages to barely meet my expectations, as opposed to exceeding them.

The first thing is that in the trailers (and in the film) that the things that are funny actually happen outside the realm of the trailers and inside your mind.  You’ll find, as you were intended to find, that the ad lib created in your own head was hysterical, as were the situations.  The things in your mind brought the funny, the trailer did not.  The movie was fairly similar:  it was funnier from as a conceptual construct than it was in practice.  A lot funnier.

The other thing is that about half of what you’ll expect to see from the trailers never happens, and it’s a bad, bad sign when everything that’s actually funny about a movie ends up in the editing room floor.  The film still edges up to the same situations, but the things that brought most of the audience to the theater are all suspiciously absent.

The cast’s strengths were also absent:  Cameron Diaz has a million-watt smile and can generate a contagious field of enthusiasm.  When she smiles, the world smiles with her, and that smile didn’t make an appearance even once.  Jason Segel is a great shtick guy, but it was if some unseen power (possibly the director) was forcing him to restrain himself, which provided a muted performance.

It’s not there aren’t a few laughs, because there are.  A very few.  Unless you absolutely must go to the theaters and you’ve seen everything else at the theater, you can safely avoid this one until you have a DVD crisis.

Sorry if I've managed to derail your hopes and dreams about this movie, but forewarned is forearmed.